Contact
email | cjwhalen@uw.edu
Room 262B | Fishery Sciences Building | 1122 NE Boat St Box 355020, Seattle, WA 98195
About Me
I am a second year graduate student at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences in Seattle, WA. I work as a member of the Wood Lab under the guidance of Dr. Chelsea Wood where we study historical parasite ecology in aquatic systems around the world.
For my dissertation work I am focused on understanding how wildlife parasites are affected by extreme weather events and climate change. I currently am conducting projects on the parasites of marine mammals, freshwater fishes, and terrestrial birds across a range of ecosystems.
Marine Mammals
Myself along with a team of 15 undergraduate volunteers dissect marine mammal (mainly harbor seal and harbor porpoise) GI tracts to detect, identify, and quantify parasitic burden therein. We conduct our dissections at the Burke Museum every Wednesday from 10-4 during the academic year. These data will be used to inform how parasites affect metabolic output of their hosts, as well as providing new insights into marine mammal parasitism rates and diversity.
Freshwater Fish
In the summer of 2024, myself and a team of 8 others from
the University of Washington, the University of South
Carolina, Tuskeegee University, and Valdosta State
University traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana to work with
the Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection housed at Tulane
University’s Biodiversity Research Institute. We dissected
1,118 fish over the course of 3 months and identified over
36,000 individual parasites. These data are currently being
analyzed in relation to extreme weather events that affected
the Pearl River ecosystem between 1963 and 2005, including
25 hurricanes, with the ultimate goal of determining the
effect of such storms on parasite biodiversity and abundance
in freshwater fishes. 
